What's the plan for the cPanel to Plesk switch?

[badrihippo]

Hey there,

Just got you email about cPanel unilaterally revoking licenses 🙁 Very evil of them, and thanks a lot for the heads-up as well as working so hard to keep this service going!

A few questions about the switchover process. Others are welcome to add in theirs too—I see queries all over the place right now and it'd save time for everyone if we had everything in one thread (the more generic ones, at least) 🙂

• You say our websites will be down, but as of now mine (a set of static files as well as a MySQL remote connection) are still working. Does that mean it'll stay, or is it going to go down in a bit?
• If the latter, would there be a grace period before you start work? I'd definitely find it helpful if I had, say, a couple days to switch over to my VPS and get things running there. (Of course that also means people who don't have a backup plan wait that much longer for their setup to be fixed, so if you need to blackout now, that's cool, I understand).
• A more long term question (which you've probably already thought about): are there any open-source cPanel/Plesk alternatives which would prevent HelioHost from being caught in the cold again?

Also, to answer some of the panicked enquiries elsewhere on the forum, I'm pretty sure HelioHost will remain free as soon as the Plesk switchover has been sorted out. That's kind of the point of their existence 😉

[balloons]

This answer is decentralized, as many people have written it, but these topics and comments already exist.
The answer I know:

 

42 minutes ago, badrihippo said:

You say our websites will be down, but as of now mine (a set of static files as well as a MySQL remote connection) are still working. Does that mean it'll stay, or is it going to go down in a bit?

The account will be deleted once when the administrator installs Plesk. This will cause a few days down.

42 minutes ago, badrihippo said:

If the latter, would there be a grace period before you start work? I'd definitely find it helpful if I had, say, a couple days to switch over to my VPS and get things running there. (Of course that also means people who don't have a backup plan wait that much longer for their setup to be fixed, so if you need to blackout now, that's cool, I understand).

Tommy will soon be down. Next is Ricky, then Johnny. It is foretold that this work will take days. 
Tommy users have already received an email from HelioHost. It has a link where you can download the backup. Everything that cPanel managed is there.
Of course, you can back up using SFTP before you receive the email.
If you are using something other than Tommy, you still have days to back up.

Details of 2 items so far:

 

42 minutes ago, badrihippo said:

A more long term question (which you've probably already thought about): are there any open-source cPanel/Plesk alternatives which would prevent HelioHost from being caught in the cold again?

HelioHost chose Plesk because it can be installed on Lily, which runs Windows Server. This almost eliminates other options.
Root administrators and moderators may provide a little more information on this.

Details:

 

42 minutes ago, badrihippo said:

Also, to answer some of the panicked enquiries elsewhere on the forum, I'm pretty sure HelioHost will remain free as soon as the Plesk switchover has been sorted out. That's kind of the point of their existence 😉

Yes. That is the correct: "Free hosting for everyone." This should not change.
However, I also know that HelioHost is considering new options. It will be revealed soon. (already have a $4 VPS option)

Details:

 

[badrihippo]

Wow, thanks @balloons for the detailed response and for taking the time to piece everything together! Good to know about the timeline; I'm on Tommy so I'll start moving right away then 😛

[Unknown025]

Just to clarify on a few points - websites will in fact be taken offline, but backups are/will be provided. If you're looking to migrate to a VPS, Krydos might be able to help with that. As for why Plesk was chosen, I don't know for certain, but a lot of open source panels aren't as robust as industry solutions, which is a big reason as to why HelioHost used cPanel for the last sixteen years. Being scalable to hundreds of accounts is a high bar to pass. 

[badrihippo]

Yup, got it. The scalability factor makes sense; I didn't think of that!

10 hours ago, Unknown025 said:

If you're looking to migrate to a VPS, Krydos might be able to help with that.

No worries about that: I have a (HelioHost) VPS already; just hadn't bothered to move the last few stuff from Tommy. I guess the time for that has come 😅